westside195025-year-old student from Croatia and a semi-pro poker player
Hi guys and welcome to my blog. I'm westside1950, 25 year old student and poker player from Croatia and I hope you'll enjoy reading about both my poker and non-poker observations, stories and adventures.
I play regular speed heads-up SNG's on pokerstars(3.5€ /7&euro
with tendency to move up the stakes and play heads-up cash games. Well, someday 
If you ask any professional poker player what was the hardest part of his career, you'll mostly get the same answer - the beginning. Yes, when you play medium/high stakes and lose 400$ a day or maybe 5000$ on a single month, it can be hard.
But at that point you already know everything about game, swings, variance; your confidence won't be gone after a few bad sessions and in the end - when the downswing passes , you'll emerge even better and more confident.
But in the beginning.. ehhh, that's a whole different story.
My bad beat is worse then yours
My story began a few years ago when I made a first deposit of 100$. I started playing some microstakes cash games and after one week I had a little over 200$ on my account.
It made me feel I was the king of the world.
''Man, poker is easy'' - I thought - '' If I keep like this I'll have 500$ by the end of the month and when I move up to higher stakes I'll earn even more and more ''
Of course, that's not what happened. Next week wasn't so good and by the end of it I was stuck at about 180$. I was still 80$ ahead , but my plan of making 500$ by the end of a month didn't seem much real right now.
It was saturday and I went out drinking with friends, got home at 5AM and had this brilliant idea of playing with my whole bankroll at one table.(Sounds familiar, eh?)
I played ultra-mega tight for the first 15 minutes and then I got them. Aces on the button!
Guy on the cut-off opened a pot and I re-raised him really big. He thought for a few seconds and went all-in. I called immediately and he revealed KK.
''No king, no king'' - I prayed out loud. The flop came AJ3, all rainbow. I was so happy to see that ace out there that I completely ignored turn and river cards...
Well, you all know what happened: Q and a ten went out, I went from delirium to depression in a about 1.5 second and busted my whole bankroll.
Days and weeks I whined about my bad beat to everyone who was willing to listen. It took me years to realize that I got what I deserved. Ok, my aces got cracked - but if I kept playing like that, totally ignoring my bankroll management whenever I couldn't make some money on micros - going busted was just a matter of time.
It also made me realize that bad beats are just another part of the game, you can not win every time. And if all you do is whine about the times your hand got cracked, how good is your game gonna be? I learned that in a hardest possible way.
So today I'm a whole different player, more confident and always willing to learn more.
According to Sharkscope, I have the highest profit in 3.5$/€ heads-up SNGs in the 2015 then any other player in the world, so it's a big motivation for me to keep on playing.
(Not using the same nickname here and on the poker site, if you are interested I can write it next time so you can track my progress)
So this was how it all began, next time I'll bring some stories from the present.
Talk to you soon!
